Monica L. Smith | University of California, Los Angeles

Monica L. Smith

University of California, Los Angeles, Anthropology, Faculty Member

University of California, Los Angeles, Anthropology, Faculty Member |

Monica Smith is an archaeologist whose principal research interests are the human interaction with material culture, urbanism as a long-term human phenomenon, and the development of social complexity.

Her current research project is at the ancient city of Sisupalgarh in eastern India, in collaboration with Dr. R.K. Mohanty of Pune's Deccan College. She also maintains long-term research interests in the American Southwest, particularly on the historic period.
Phone: 310-794-9179
Address: Department of Anthropology
341 Haines Hall
375 Portola Plaza
University of California
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1553

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Books

Abundance: The Archaeology of Plenitude (Monica L. Smith, editor)

Using case studies from around the globe — including North America, Africa, China, and the Greco-... more Using case studies from around the globe — including North America, Africa, China, and the Greco-Roman world — and across multiple time periods, the authors in this volume makes the case that abundance provides an essential explanatory perspective on ancient peoples’ choices and activities. Economists frequently center on scarcity as a driving principle in the development of social and economic hierarchies, yet focusing on plenitude enables the understanding of a range of cohesive behaviors that were equally important for the development of social complexity.

Our earliest human ancestors were highly mobile hunter-gatherers who sought out places that provided ample food, water, and raw materials. Over time, humans accumulated and displayed an increasing quantity and variety of goods. In households, shrines, tombs, caches, and dumps, archaeologists have discovered large masses of materials that were deliberately gathered, curated, distributed, and discarded by ancient peoples. This volume’s authors draw upon new economic theories to consider the social, ideological, and political implications of human engagement with abundant quantities of resources and physical objects, and consider how individual and household approaches to material culture were conditioned by the quest for attaining abundance. They illustrate that the human propensity for mass consumption is not just the result of modern production capacities but fulfills a longstanding focus on plenitude as both the assurance of well-being and a buffer against uncertainty.

Authors and chapter titles:

Monica L. Smith, “The Archaeology of Abundance”

María Nieves Zedeño , “Rethinking the Impact of Abundance on the Rhythm of Bison Hunter Societies”

Christopher R. Moore and Christopher W. Schmidt , “Abundance in the Archaic: A Dwelling Perspective”

Mark D. Varien, James M. Potter, and Tito E. Naranjo, “Water, Wind, Breath: Seeking Abundance in the Northern American Southwest”

Payson Sheets, “Abundance in the Ancient Maya Village of Cerén?”

Traci Ardren, “Savanna Products and Resource Abundance: Asking the Right Questions about Ancient Maya Trade and Urbanism”

Elizabeth Klarich, Abigail Levine, and Carol Schultze, “Abundant Exotics and Cavalier Crafting: Obsidian Use and Emerging Complexity in the Northern Lake Titicaca Basin”

Katheryn C. Twiss and Amy Bogaard, “Coping with Abundance: The Challenges of a Good Thing”

Justin St. P. Walsh, “Pottery: Abundance, Agency, and Choice”

François G. Richard, “’Excessive Economies’and the Logics of Abundance: Genealogies of Wealth, Labor, and Social Power in Pre-Colonial Senegal”

Stacey Pierson, “Production, Distribution, and Aesthetics: Abundance and Chinese Porcelain from Jingdezhen, AD 1350–1800”

http://upcolorado.com/university-press-of-colorado/item/3156-abundance

A Prehistory of Ordinary People

For the past million years, individuals have engaged in multitasking as they interact with the su... more For the past million years, individuals have engaged in multitasking as they interact with the surrounding environment and with each other for the acquisition of daily necessities such as food and goods. Although culture is often perceived as a collective process, it is individual people who use language, experience illness, expend energy, perceive landscapes, and create memories. These processes were sustained at the individual and household level from the time of the earliest social groups to the beginnings of settled agricultural communities and the eventual development of complex societies in the form of chiefdoms, states, and empires.

The Social Construction of Ancient Cities (Monica L. Smith, editor)

In this edited volume, the authors consider evidence for social interactions in cities of Africa,... more In this edited volume, the authors consider evidence for social interactions in cities of Africa, Mesoamerica, South America, Mesopotamia, the Indian subcontinent and China. Analyzing the spatial and social configurations of urban communities and public spaces, they demonstrate how complex networks of social relations and structures gave rise to the formation of ancient cities, contributed to their cohesion, and sustained their growth, much as they do in modern urban centers.

Excavations at Sisupalgarh (Rabindra Kumar Mohanty and Monica L. Smith)

The Archaeology of an Early Historic Town in Central India

The Historic Period at Bandelier National Monument

Urbanism

Urbanism and the Middle Class: Co-Emergent Phenomena in the World’s First Cities

Beginning six thousand years ago, intermediate categories of socioeconomic status formed for the ... more Beginning six thousand years ago, intermediate categories of socioeconomic status formed for the first time in cities as entrepreneurial individuals and households engaged in scaled-up manufacturing activities and in new types of “white collar” work, such as accounting, writing, and middle management. Knowledge workers were indispensable not only for the production and trade activities that characterized ancient cities, but also for the growth and management of religious institutions and the development of political authority. Archaeological and textual data provide evidence for a middle producer-consumer stratum in both tangible possessions (real estate, dwellings, material goods) and intangible investments (schooling, language, and mannerisms). Using information from Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, Rome, and Mesoamerica, the article assesses how strategies of resource management and risk-taking utilized by the middle class also resulted in generative political relationships to address middle-class anxieties through the development of law codes, insurance, and formal systems of professional advancement.

Urban Infrastructure as Materialized Consensus

Infrastructure that shapes and facilitates daily life, such as pathways, conduits and boundary wa... more Infrastructure that shapes and facilitates daily life, such as pathways, conduits and boundary walls, constitutes one of the most dynamic forms of architecture in both ancient and modern cities. Although infrastructure is conceived and designed with particular goals and capacities, its temporal and spatial scale means that it is a constant work in progress that engages numerous agents: civic authorities design and implement infrastructure; designated agencies maintain and repair infrastructure; and ordinary people utilize, modify, ignore or destroy it. Infrastructure can be thus analyzed as a materialization of ongoing communication, in which there are often conflicts among different constituents to achieve consensus. The linguistic concepts of expert language and turn-taking are utilized to assess three brief case studies: historical New Orleans; a multipurpose micro-park in Vienna, Austria; and the archaeological city of Sisupalgarh, India.

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